Israel Picks New Security Agency Chief

Breaking A Tradition Of Secrecy, His Identity Is Revealed

JERUSALEM — Israel publicly named the new head of its internal secret security agency Sunday, breaking a tradition of secrecy dating back to the birth of the Jewish state in 1948.

Prime Minister Shimon Peres informed his Cabinet at its regular meeting Sunday that he had appointed Rear Adm. Ami Ayalon to head the General Security Service--known as Shin Bet--a once-proud agency humiliated by its failure to prevent the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin on Nov. 4.

The government then took the unprecedented step Sunday of announcing Ayalon's appointment. It also disclosed the name of his predecessor, Karmi Gillon, another break with a security tradition that had made it unpatriotic and illegal to identify the head of the intensely secretive agency for 48 years.

Explaining the abrupt shift, Israeli intelligence analysts said it should be no surprise given recent hopeful signs in the Middle East peace process and changes in Israeli society and culture in general.

Israelis are moving increasingly towards a more Western, open and democratic society that demands more accountability from government officials. Its media and populace are quicker to criticize when mistakes are made. Many believe it's time to relax rules of censorship that have governed the Jewish state through a series of wars for its existence.

Meanwhile, Shin Bet's role is being redefined. The agency is in need of reorganization and rehabilitation after the assassination, one of the reasons Peres reached outside the agency for its new chief.

"I think everything in this country is going public," said Ehud Sprinzak, an expert on terrorism from Hebrew University. "In the old days, everything was secret here. You couldn't even say the name `Shin Bet' in public. If somebody told you he worked for the prime minister's office, it meant he was either Shin Bet or Mossad."

Shin Bet, also known as Shabak, is responsible for protecting Israel's leaders. It also is responsible for all covert operations inside Israel and the occupied territories, and for dealing with Palestinian terrrorist threats overseas. The Mossad is the intelligence agency for all other spy operations abroad; its leader is still identified only by the initial "S."

Sprinzak cited the dangers of identifying the Shin Bet chief, adding, it "has been the tradition to consider it dangerous to have his name known."

But events of the last several days have changed the rules. "The name of (its) resigning head has been spread all over by the Palestinians and the Israeli Right, and you can even find it on the Internet," Sprinzak said.

The Cabinet communique issued Sunday said Peres decided to go public with the names because it is no longer possible to preserve secrecy. It also noted that Ayalon already had held a public post.

Shin Bet reserves the right to go back to keeping its leader's name secret in the future, the communique indicated, explaining, "this decision is not to be viewed as a precedent."

Moreover, Peres instructed the Cabinet that Shin Bet will remain under a veil of secrecy for now, according to Cabinet Secretary Shmuel Hollander. Information regarding the agency is still subject to "prior approval by the military censor."

Arguing for a permanent change, Sprinzak and others note that Israel now has peace accords with Egypt, Jordan and the Palestinians, and that tensions in the region are diminishing, including the peace talks with Syria.

"The myth of security is not as important as it was before and under these circumstances, you can relax some of these standards," Sprinzak said.

"There is also a change in Israeli culture. Fifty years ago the establishment of state security in this country was almost a religion, and under the cover of security, lots of things could be done. This is no longer the case."

Yossi Melman, an Israeli author and journalist who has written extensively about Israel's security apparatus, argues that "the turning point" for the public was the 1973 Yom Kippur War, when people became suspicious of their government being caught by surprise attacks when there had been widespread advance reports of Arab army mobilizations.

Melman pointed out other instances of perceived failures of the Shin Bet, including scandals involving torture and killings of Palestinian prisoners, which prompted the government to work on a Shin Bet law defining its interrogation methods. That law is to be announced in coming weeks.

Before Sunday's change, the tradition in the Israeli press was to identify a Shin Bet chief only by the first initial of his first name. Gillon therefore always was referred to as "Kaf," the Hebrew letter beginning his first name.

Critics said the practice resonated more like a James Bond movie than a real security measure, since foreign newspapers often printed the full names and they appeared in books abroad.